Life on Mars – From Ray Bradbury to NASA, we have an undying fascination with what mysteries the red planet could hold. And now, courtesy of NASA’s Curiosity, we have one more to add to the list: nitrogen traces that could have been used by living organisms.
Now, this doesn’t mean that there has been life on Mars, nor does it mean that there is now or will be in the future. But nitrogen plays an important part on life s we know it, and the nitrogen cycle on Earth is very much a part of what keeps us alive.
In a nutshell, bacteria creates the compound, which works its way into plants and other life on earth. Eventually it works its way back into the ground, and the cycle starts again. Finding nitrogen opens the door to the possibilities of life at some point in Mar’s history, so this has warranted a lot of excitement and further investigation. It might be that we just missed meeting our closest neighbors by a few eons or so.
More information can be found here.
